But I'm getting some graphics problems in some games. In Saints Row The Third, my character's upper body (not including head) is all polygonny. But the clothes aren't. Then in Mirror's Edge, I occasionally see the sun/a bright light source (anything that causes lens flare) through walls.

Asus and MSI tends to follow the reference design the best. I've had bad experiances with eVGA where the layout is the same, but they used non reference parts such as chokes that are taller than the reference ones.

Asus aren't good at reference designs in my experience, I have two outwardly identical reference cards one Asus and one Point of View - having taken both apart the PoV has a nice big copper plate touching the GPU chip itself, the Asus has a much smaller aluminum (or at least silver coloured) one, and runs up to 20C hotter in identical conditions.

And don't even get me started on their non-reference designs, the 6970 DirectCU II is just simply retarded

I work at a FedEx Ground distribution center and a box tonight needed taping up and it's generally interesting to look inside and see whats in the box. It was a GTX 680....... The worst part was that the way I was looking at it was the way you would see a new one as if you ordered it and had just opened the box lol.

I work at a FedEx Ground distribution center and a box tonight needed taping up and it's generally interesting to look inside and see whats in the box. It was a GTX 680....... The worst part was that the way I was looking at it was the way you would see a new one as if you ordered it and had just opened the box lol.

I work at a FedEx Ground distribution center and a box tonight needed taping up and it's generally interesting to look inside and see whats in the box. It was a GTX 680....... The worst part was that the way I was looking at it was the way you would see a new one as if you ordered it and had just opened the box lol.

Asus aren't good at reference designs in my experience, I have two outwardly identical reference cards one Asus and one Point of View - having taken both apart the PoV has a nice big copper plate touching the GPU chip itself, the Asus has a much smaller aluminum (or at least silver coloured) one, and runs up to 20C hotter in identical conditions.

And don't even get me started on their non-reference designs, the 6970 DirectCU II is just simply retarded

Asus aren't good at reference designs in my experience, I have two outwardly identical reference cards one Asus and one Point of View - having taken both apart the PoV has a nice big copper plate touching the GPU chip itself, the Asus has a much smaller aluminum (or at least silver coloured) one, and runs up to 20C hotter in identical conditions.

And don't even get me started on their non-reference designs, the 6970 DirectCU II is just simply retarded

What? The DirectCU II is probably the best GPU air cooled design I've ever seen on a card. Yah it's triple slot on cards above the GTX 560 Ti so it could cause issues with SLI/CFX, but it's great at keeping the temperatures down.

What? The DirectCU II is probably the best GPU air cooled design I've ever seen on a card. Yah it's triple slot on cards above the GTX 560 Ti so it could cause issues with SLI/CFX, but it's great at keeping the temperatures down.

It's an amazing cooler, but the 6970 bends under the weight of it and it pulls away from the GPU chip, causing pretty severe overheating. It's a well documented issue, and quite simply poor engineering.

I have had to support with cable ties between it and a drive bay, as well as adding extra thermal paste to bridge the gap

Yeah well sure. It also serves as assurance that your card CAN in fact be overclocked. I bought a stock 560 Ti and it faceplants violently if i even attempt a 15 MHz core increase. so yeah. Retards and people who want to be sure of what would otherwise be a gamble at potential performance gain.

EVGA confirmed late 2011 that their overclocked cards aren't higher binned at all, just overclocks (apparently saying that's why their cards are so "affordable") I shouldn't generalize though, maybe some other cards are.